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it was a chilly autumn dawn. The square was deserted. The ornate Louis XII fountain lapped by us in the quiet morning.
    “Be careful,” I said. “Don’t trust new friends. They may not be your friends nowadays.”
    My bold brother had turned eighteen at the end of August. No older sister was going to give him advice. He wore his invincibility like a cloak. I had felt like that once, when I was sixteen. Monsieur Leforges’s dancing instructions had taken that away.
    Etienne thanked me and looked over my shoulder for the diligence coming into the square. We could hear it lumbering through the slowly awakening streets. I touched his arm. “I have something for you,” I said.
    The coach was entering the square. It stopped by the fountain. I pressed into Etienne’s hand a watch that I had bought for him, on a silver chain with a miniature attached to it. He opened the miniature, saw the likeness of me, and quickly shut it again. I kissed him, and he stepped into the diligence . He waved from the window and I waved back; then I watched his carriage roll noisily out of the square, and the only sound again was that of the ancient fountain.
    Etienne had been my best friend for these past several years. Marguerite was my confidante in many things, but she had her family.
    Etienne was my companion. I wrapped my shawl tighter around me.
    The cathedral was still in shadow. The cobbles were wet with dew. I had never been here at this hour, and I didn’t know how cold and dark Louis XII Square was at dawn.
    Now I would move to chez Vincent, the house of Marguerite’s family on top of the steep hill across the river in Vienne. Maman had already resumed her old theme of marriage. It was tiresome for me; I still had no taste for it, and now with Etienne gone I would be more vulnerable.
    Papa was at the hospital all the time or attending patients. Besides, I had a job to do at chez Vincent. Marguerite’s attention was taken up with her two-year-old son, Gérard, and I was to entertain and tutor her eight-year-old daughter, Marie.
    She and I read together, practiced piano, and drew pictures of the vine rows that stretched down the steep hill of her father’s property toward the river, or of the small fountain in the courtyard in the sunlight. She took her drawings seriously, and they frequently had much more style and precision than mine. I also taught her dance steps that we practiced together, as at a ball, songs by Lully, and some simple things about writing one’s thoughts down and making observations.
    Today was a gray day over the river, with an early autumn crispness that made me think of the beginning of the hunting season, of the contentment that shone on Papa’s face as if the world held no greater joy than this moment in the early morning: with the smoke of the breath of horses and of men on the air; with his daughter mounted beside him; with the hounds barking about the heels of the horses; just before we dashed through the waist-high grass in the meadow and pursued whatever adventure the day had in store. I decided my next job would be to teach Marie to ride.
    This morning I started the lesson with a passage for Marie to read from Rousseau’s Emile : “The only moral lesson which is suited for a child—the most important lesson for every time of life—is this: ‘Never hurt anybody.’” I had her memorize those three words and who said them. “Imagine,” I said, “what the world would be like if everyone tried to follow Rousseau’s most important lesson ?”
    Marie said it would be a very nice world.
    She also liked word games, and in the late morning we were looking out the dormer windows at a funnel of fog creeping up the river.
    “I have a riddle for you, Marie.”
    “What is it?”
    “Why is the fog like a magician?”
    She thought awhile. “Because they both make things disappear,” she said and smiled.
    “You’re right.” The riddle was too elementary for her, but it was all I could think up, and